ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a new interpretation of Allan Kaprow’s environment Push and Pull—A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hofmann (1963) based on complex pedagogical scenes which influenced Kaprow’s development as an artist and academic. Drawing from archival materials, the author describes the way Hofmann’s classroom assemblages and gestural demonstrations prompted Kaprow and others to conflate an aesthetic ideal of perceptual contrast with an anxious experience of interaction. In this context, Push and Pull appears to cast viewers in the role of Hofmann’s students whose intuitive creative process must incorporate or withstand the unpredictable interference of others. From a broader standpoint of intellectual history, Push and Pull not only stages a critique of the commodity form of art but also brings into focus a transitional moment in the history of viewer participation, when older theories of creative vision rooted in Gestalt psychology began to acknowledge the mediating role of social experience.
